Eight lawyers have been identified and named by the police in its FIR filed last week against a group of advocates who allegedly tried to prevent crime branch sleuths from filing a charge sheet against the accused in the rape and murder of a girl in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir, an official said.

The FIR was lodged against dozens of lawyers on April 10, a day after members of Bar Association, Kathua staged a protest and tried to obstruct the police from filing the charge sheet in the court of chief judicial magistrate, Kathua, against seven of the eight accused arrested in connection with the rape and murder case.

During investigation, the role of eight lawyers has come to the fore and accordingly their names were included in the FIR, the official said adding the investigation was still ongoing and inclusion of more names cannot be ruled out.

The trial in the case, which started today, is expected to go smoothly after the Jammu and Kathua Bar associations received a rap on the knuckles by the Supreme Court on April 13 as the Apex Court took a strong note of some lawyers obstructing the judicial process in the case.

The Supreme Court initiated a case on its own record saying such impediment “affects the dispensation of justice and would amount to obstruction of access to justice”.

On April 14, the Bar Association, Kathua, claimed that they never obstructed the crime branch from filing the charge sheet against the accused. It also withdrew its offer to contest the case of the accused free of cost.